You Filthy Right Wing Extremists

[theexorcist]

Apr 14, 2009 15:34:50 GMT -5 Bando said:

The thing is, I don't think anything in this report is about Malkin et al., but Malkin et al. seem to think this applies to them. This is a problem.

The actual report is at michellemalkin.cachefly.net/michellemalkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/hsa-rightwing-extremism-09-04-07.pdf

The problem is that it's wishy-washy. There's no mention of one group anywhere - which is strange, because these reports, unless they're "think pieces", reference specific groups (one possible reason is that there's a classified version and this is the redacted one - most police departments don't have anyone who's cleared.

The other strange part is the title. Rightwing (never seen it as one word) violence is a poor descriptor (as is left-wing, especially now that the election of Obama has eliminated most of the impetus for groups to oppose the administration). I'm surprised that it wasn't some bigger item on domestic terrorism, with sections on environmental extremism, opposition to gun control, opposition to government intrusion, opposition to illegal immigration (as a think piece, they're all legitimate as a flashpoint).

But, really, the biggest issue is that it's really poorly written.

[TC]

Apr 14, 2009 15:34:50 GMT -5 Bando said:

The thing is, I don't think anything in this report is about Malkin et al., but Malkin et al. seem to think this applies to them. This is a problem.

Does she really think it applies to her? Or is it just trying to find a reason to be outraged, the more ridiculous the better?

[Boz]

A response from Republicans in the Senate:

www.publiusforum.com/pdfs/SenateresponsetoDHS.pdf

[Jack]

Apr 17, 2009 13:32:40 GMT -5 Boz said:

A response from Republicans in the Senate:

www.publiusforum.com/pdfs/SenateresponsetoDHS.pdf

Those seem like rational and measured criticisms of what was at best a poorly worded and/or uninformative report. Good to see that GOP Senators don't see the need to wallow in the same rhetorical excess as their rabble-rousing friends on the airwaves.

[EasyEd]

The DHS report, in addition to the other criticisms, was bone-headed politically.

[Boz]

Apr 17, 2009 14:14:30 GMT -5 Jack said:

Apr 17, 2009 13:32:40 GMT -5 Boz said:

A response from Republicans in the Senate:

www.publiusforum.com/pdfs/SenateresponsetoDHS.pdf

Those seem like rational and measured criticisms of what was at best a poorly worded and/or uninformative report. Good to see that GOP Senators don't see the need to wallow in the same rhetorical excess as their rabble-rousing friends on the airwaves.

Good answer, Jack. You should be a writer at DHS. They could use the help.
;D

Aside: we have lost all network at my office. I have spent the last 90 minute reading transcripts of our financial analysts conferences. My brain is drooling with boredom and jargon. Hoyatalk on the iPhone for the rest of the day. Woo-hoo!!
;D

Edit: Damn, they just got everything back online. Aw, screw it. It's high time for a cocktail. Hell, I've already got my jeans on....

[thebin]

Apr 17, 2009 15:33:50 GMT -5 Boz said:

Apr 17, 2009 14:14:30 GMT -5 Jack said:

Those seem like rational and measured criticisms of what was at best a poorly worded and/or uninformative report. Good to see that GOP Senators don't see the need to wallow in the same rhetorical excess as their rabble-rousing friends on the airwaves.

Good answer, Jack. You should be a writer at DHS. They could use the help.
;D

Aside: we have lost all network at my office. I have spent the last 90 minute reading transcripts of our financial analysts conferences. My brain is drooling with boredom and jargon. Hoyatalk on the iPhone for the rest of the day. Woo-hoo!!
;D

Edit: Damn, they just got everything back online. Aw, screw it. It's high time for a cocktail. Hell, I've already got my jeans on....

You might want to mix in some Flight Control with that.

[Boz]

I prefer "Pocket God" because, of course, I am a sadist.

Good weekend, everyone, netroots and wingnuts alike.

[Cambridge]

Doesn't seem as far off as first imagined in light of recent events.

[Boz]

Jun 10, 2009 16:22:16 GMT -5 Cambridge said:

Doesn't seem as far off as first imagined in light of recent events.

Yeah, like that damn right wing nut job who shot and killed William Long.

Crazy is crazy and it comes in all political stripes.

Anyone who says different has an agenda I won't trust.

[Cambridge]

I agree with you Boz. Crazy is crazy. I stand down from my intraboard taunt.

[GIGAFAN99]

Jun 10, 2009 17:49:04 GMT -5 Boz said:

Jun 10, 2009 16:22:16 GMT -5 Cambridge said:

Doesn't seem as far off as first imagined in light of recent events.

Yeah, like that damn right wing nut job who shot and killed William Long.

Crazy is crazy and it comes in all political stripes.

Anyone who says different has an agenda I won't trust.

Indeed. The careful and measured tone of CNN when they reported the murderer of William Long "might have political or religious motives" was fine...until today.

When the first source said this crazy old man was linked to the neo-nazis, the headline was immediately "Sources: Shooter was a White Supremacist." It was appalling.

Both killers are likely paranoid, detached and quite frankly mentally ill to some degree. Assigning them any logical reasons for murder is a stretch. But tiptoeing around one's perverted reasoning and using the other's for sensational journalism is not surprising but still another fantastic low for "journalism."

[Buckets]

Jun 10, 2009 18:11:07 GMT -5 GIGAFAN99 said:

When the first source said this crazy old man was linked to the neo-nazis, the headline was immediately "Sources: Shooter was a White Supremacist." It was appalling... Assigning them any logical reasons for murder is a stretch.

The guy wrote a 350-page book detailing the Jewish conspiracy to use the Holocaust (which he denies) to "destroy the white gene pool." He later opened fire in the Holocaust museum. The guy's certainly out of his mind, but are you really suggesting there's some sort of logical gap here?

[GIGAFAN99]

Jun 10, 2009 19:21:41 GMT -5 Buckets said:

Jun 10, 2009 18:11:07 GMT -5 GIGAFAN99 said:

When the first source said this crazy old man was linked to the neo-nazis, the headline was immediately "Sources: Shooter was a White Supremacist." It was appalling... Assigning them any logical reasons for murder is a stretch.

The guy wrote a 350-page book detailing the Jewish conspiracy to use the Holocaust (which he denies) to "destroy the white gene pool." He later opened fire in the Holocaust museum. The guy's certainly out of his mind, but are you really suggesting there's some sort of logical gap here?

No. But there isn't in this case either:

www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/01/arkansas.recruiter.shooting/index.html?iref=newssearch

But here the quote is; "While authorities continued to investigate a motive, Thomas said Muhammad is a Muslim convert and, based on preliminary interviews with him, investigators believe there were "political and religious motives" in the shooting." Well isn't that incredibly subdued?

Of course one nut thinks he should kill people because he's been wronged by blacks and Jews. And of course the other nut thinks he should kill American servicemen because he's been wronged by white servicemen. That's what nuts do. They're nuts. But in one case it's "Oh by the way it might have been this issue he had" and here it's "His hate made him do it."

Why? Watch the talking heads talk about this, or the abortion doctor's murderer and you'll know why. The story sets up the discussion which will undoubtedly lead even smart people like Cambridge to emotionally say "Hey, maybe we should be scared of the right wing crazies." I guarantee the articles and segments talk about this guy being "right wing." And yes it makes it seem like Boz and this neo-Nazi are under the same scary tent when it gets painted that way.

[Boz]

Actually, on my Web site, I write about the vast conspiracy to bring every god-awful, horrible, inept driver -- all of whom also happen to be ombrophobic -- to the Washington, D.C., metropolitan area.

No, I haven't opened fire on any of them, unless you count the stream of obscenity which escapes my mouth to rival that of Ralphie Parker's old man.

(sorry, not trying to demean what happened today, just thought I'd lighten the mood a little bit).

[Buckets]

Jun 10, 2009 19:46:59 GMT -5 GIGAFAN99 said:

No. But there isn't in this case either:

www.cnn.com/2009/CRIME/06/01/arkansas.recruiter.shooting/index.html?iref=newssearch

But here the quote is; "While authorities continued to investigate a motive, Thomas said Muhammad is a Muslim convert and, based on preliminary interviews with him, investigators believe there were "political and religious motives" in the shooting." Well isn't that incredibly subdued?

Of course one nut thinks he should kill people because he's been wronged by blacks and Jews. And of course the other nut thinks he should kill American servicemen because he's been wronged by white servicemen. That's what nuts do. They're nuts. But in one case it's "Oh by the way it might have been this issue he had" and here it's "His hate made him do it."

Why? Watch the talking heads talk about this, or the abortion doctor's murderer and you'll know why. The story sets up the discussion which will undoubtedly lead even smart people like Cambridge to emotionally say "Hey, maybe we should be scared of the right wing crazies." I guarantee the articles and segments talk about this guy being "right wing." And yes it makes it seem like Boz and this neo-Nazi are under the same scary tent when it gets painted that way.

But there's a difference between authorities concluding one guy's motives after questioning, and one guy writing a 350-page manifesto that was publicly available before the crime. On William Long's shooter:

Also Wednesday, The Associated Press, also citing an unnamed official, said some of the sites searched and mapped out on Google were Jewish organizations, a child care center, a Baptist church, a post office and military recruiting centers in the southeastern U.S. and New York and Philadelphia.

So, yes, I think the conclusion of his motives should be a little more subdued than a Holocaust denier who wrote a book on the subject and then opened fire in the Holocaust Museum.

[Bando]

Jun 10, 2009 17:49:04 GMT -5 Boz said:

Jun 10, 2009 16:22:16 GMT -5 Cambridge said:

Doesn't seem as far off as first imagined in light of recent events.

Yeah, like that damn right wing nut job who shot and killed William Long.

Crazy is crazy and it comes in all political stripes.

Anyone who says different has an agenda I won't trust.

What about the guy who shot George Tiller? Or the guy who killed those cops in Pittsburgh because he thought Obama was going to take his guns? Or the guy who shot up the Unitarian church in Tennessee?

I'm not denying that there are nutjobs at the fringes of both sides of the political spectrum, nor am I saying that we need to be afraid of anyone who's conservative. But given the political realities at the moment, it makes sense that the nuts on the right are going to more active than the nuts on the left right now. The DHS report seems quite prescient, and it's a shame it was withdrawn.

[Boz]

Jun 11, 2009 10:39:43 GMT -5 Bando said:

Jun 10, 2009 17:49:04 GMT -5 Boz said:

Yeah, like that damn right wing nut job who shot and killed William Long.

Crazy is crazy and it comes in all political stripes.

Anyone who says different has an agenda I won't trust.

What about the guy who shot George Tiller? Or the guy who killed those cops in Pittsburgh because he thought Obama was going to take his guns? Or the guy who shot up the Unitarian church in Tennessee?

I'm not denying that there are nutjobs at the fringes of both sides of the political spectrum, nor am I saying that we need to be afraid of anyone who's conservative. But given the political realities at the moment, it makes sense that the nuts on the right are going to more active than the nuts on the left right now. The DHS report seems quite prescient, and it's a shame it was withdrawn.

Actually, right now, I'm having a difficult time discerning between the words of the loon who shot up the Holocaust Museum yesterday and the words of Rev. Jeremiah Wright in the past few days.

Most Nazis/white supremacists hate conservatives/Republicans as much or more than they hate liberals. Branding them right wing extremists is a misnomer and always has been. Anarchists might come close, but I prefer the more clinical term "F***NUTS."

[theexorcist]

I don't like discussing this stuff in the immediate aftermath of such tragedies, when both sides use single events to justify broad policy changes.

michellemalkin.cachefly.net/michellemalkin.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2009/04/hsa-rightwing-extremism-09-04-07.pdf has the report.

It's still poorly done and it's not prescient. Here's why:

Not Prescient
1. The report is silent on the chance of increased attacks. It talks mainly about the increased chance for recruitment.

2. There are two references to abortion in the document. One's in a footnote on page two that describes rightwing groups as being potentially single-issue, specifically noting abortion. The second mentions right-wing groups exploting abortion.

The drivers mentioned are economic hardship, illegal immigration, gun legislation, the rise of other countries, disgruntled veterans, and the election of Obama. None of these were reasons for either shooting - in both cases, these were people with established grievances.

Poroly Done
3. As mentioned, there was a separate report on left-wing terrorism. The question of what to put where is strange. I still think that a sole title called "domestic terrorism" would have been much more logical.

4. It's not sourced. Like I said, I'm assuming that the reasoning for this is to keep this unclassified. But they mention no groups - and yet it's too grounded to be a think piece. The three bullets that they have for supporting documentation are so thin as to be laughable.

5. It's not written well, especially when it comes to distinguishing between legitimate political opposition and extremism (which is CRITICAL for domestic terrorism analysis). The first paragraph of the Illegal Immigration section is perhaps the best example, saying that rightwing extremists believe that NAFTA led to job loss.

The problem here is that left-wing extremists believe it, too, as do many people who watch Lou Dobbs - and it was considered a logical enough position that the Obama campaign took a stand on renegotiating NAFTA.

By writing that position, DHS created the idea that people who espouse that view are dangerous and should be monitored by local police. This is HUGE. It's like saying that left-wing extremists are vegetarians - it's such a low bar to create a threat that everyone's guilty.

And, because of that, the FBI and local law enforcement are pulled in numerous directions chasing down every single lead for every person who opposes illegal immigration rather than focusing on the few people who are a much more obvious threat.

6. Oh, and a separate paragraph on the "Disgruntled Military Veterans" bit. It's weasel-worded - "the willingness of a small percentage". It's nasty, because it demeans veterans, who do not appear to have joined extremist groups at a rate either more or less than other members of society (including other potential high-threat groups as police). It also doesn't make sense, because most right-wing extremists don't trust the government or the military (the guy from yesterday would have been drafted).


Calling the report prescient is nonsensical. It predicted nothing. If you write a poor intelligence report on Comoros, and there's suddenly an attack there that didn't match the factors you expected, you weren't prescient.

Domestic terrorism is and remains a threat, but the DHS report is poorly-done and wouldn't rate a mention at an open-source analysis group, much less the organization that's supposed to be responsible for homeland security.

[The Stig]

I think this article sums up my fears about this pretty well: www.nytimes.com/2009/06/14/opinion/14rich.html?em

Mainstream conservatives need to follow McCain's lead and put a stop to this sort of stuff.

Shepard Smith's now-infamous comments about the people writing to Fox News:

There are always going to be some nutjobs out there on both sides of the spectrum. But the marked increase in activity from the far-right and their calls for action, not just words, are downright frightening.